A NOTE FROM FeedTheSpirit HOST BOBBIE LEWIS: I am traveling this week and am pleased to welcome Saloma Furlong to our online home for stories—and recipes—about faith, family traditions and good food. Stay tuned! I’ll be back soon with some special stories about foods for Christian and Jewish holidays. Here’s Saloma ….
A TASTE OF MY AMISH HOME
By SALOMA FURLONG
At the end of my new book, Bonnet Strings: An Amish Woman’s Ties to Two Worlds, I include some recipes from the Amish community where I grew up. Among them, “Mem’s White Bread” holds the deepest memories. When my older brother and sister started going to school and I was the oldest one still left at home, I would oftentimes make bread right alongside my mother, Mem. She would start first thing in the morning to make all of her loaves. When she reached the stage of turning out her dough for kneading on her breadboard, she would give me a blob of dough and let me knead it right next to her.
Of course, she often had to throw out the loaf I made because I was small and I sometimes would drop my dough on the floor while I was kneading it. It could get pretty dirty. But, sometimes, my bread would make it all the way through the process—I wouldn’t drop it—and then I’d be so proud to eat it!
When I did start going to school, I would come home on bread-baking day and I would tell her: “Oh, you made bread today without me!” So, Mem actually changed her schedule and made bread later in the day, when I was home from school.
When I was growing up, Mem was known as the best bread baker in our church district. I learned how to bake Mem‘s white bread, but it wasn’t until I was baking professionally that I wrote down the recipe. Here is the closest I have come to duplicating Mem‘s bread, including her way of teaching me what the temperature of the water or milk should be when adding the yeast.
She also would make cinnamon rolls from that white bread dough. I don’t have a written-down recipe for that, from her, but I did find a recipe for what I call the “Sticky Bun Stuff” in a Mennonite cookbook that seems to me a perfect way to recreate Mem’s sticky buns.
If you would like to learn more about my story, which was featured in two films about the Amish on the PBS network, please read my interview with ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm.
Saloma Furlong's Sticky Buns
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup butter
- 2/3 cup brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon corn syrup
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1 tablespoon vanilla
- Pecans or walnuts (optional)
- 1 1/2 cups white sugar
- 2 tablespoons cinnamon
- 1 batch of Mem's White Bread dough
- about 1/2 cup softened butter
Instructions
- In a saucepan, mix together and bring to a boil the butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, water and vanilla. Pour this Sticky Bun Stuff into three 9-inch pie pans—or a rectangular pan of similar capacity. Add pecans or walnuts if desired.
- Mix together and set aside the white sugar and cinnamon. Grease a clean counter with butter. Without punching it down, place on the greased counter and roll out to about 1/4 inch thick the batch of Mem's White Bread dough. Then, smooth the softened butter all over the dough.
- Pour the white sugar and cinnamon over the butter and spread it all over the dough. Roll it up like a jelly roll. On a cutting board, cut the roll into slices just under 2 inches thick. Place in the pie pans on top of the Sticky Bun Stuff. Cover and let rise for 45 minutes to an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place sticky buns low in the oven, second to the bottom rack. Bake for 5 minutes, and then lower the temperature to 350 degrees and bake until golden brown (about 35-40 minutes).
- Remove from oven and let sit 5 minutes. Turn a large plate upside-down over the top of the pan of sticky buns and turn over. The sticky buns should separate from the pan. Scrape any excess syrup and spread over the top of the buns. Serve while warm.
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Saloma Furlong's White Bread
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 1/2 cups hot milk
- 1 cup lukewarm water (the same temperature you would use to give a newborn baby a bath)
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 tablespoons yeast
- 5-6 cups white flour
Instructions
- In a large mixing bowl, mix together the sugar, salt, butter and milk.
- While the hot milk is dissolving the sugar and melting the butter, in a small bowl mix together the lukewarm water, sugar and yeast. Proof the yeast until it becomes nice and foamy. Meanwhile, cool the milk mixture with ice cubes until it becomes lukewarm. (If it's too hot, it will kill the yeast.) When it becomes lukewarm (same temperature as for proofing the yeast), add the yeast mixture and stir.
- Sift the flour into the milk mixture, 1 cup at a time. At first this mixture will be lumpy until you add more flour; then it should become nice and smooth. Beat well, and keep sifting in flour, about a cup at a time. The more you stir it at this point, the easier it will be to knead the dough later. When the dough forms a ball, it is ready to be kneaded.
- Turn the dough out onto a clean counter with sifted flour on it to knead it. You want the dough to be soft and yielding but not too sticky. I knead my dough for 10 minutes after I've stirred in all the flour that I can. Turn dough into a greased bowl and cover with a clean, lint-free towel. Let rise about an hour, then punch down and let rise again for 1 hour. The dough is now ready to form into loaves or rolls. Or you can make it into sticky buns.
- For bread, grease 2 pans and form dough into loaves. Let rise about 1 hour. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. When the dough has risen, place loaves in hot oven and bake for 5 minutes at 450 degrees. Then turn oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake another 40 minutes.
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